December 6, 2004 – 1:46 pm
Being an incorrigible word geek, I can’t help but share these items. TOP OF THIS LIST: My new hero is Steven Pinker, a linguist and psychologist (or “cognitive scientist”) from Harvard. About a month ago I picked up his 1994 book “The Language Instinct: How the mind creates language” just as I was sorting through a thorny style guide revision for a client. I began to see language, and the role of grammar, in an entirely new way. What timing! All editors should read his work. (Read the rest of this list…)
December 5, 2004 – 4:54 pm
Here are a few items related to webfeeds that caught my attention over the past month. TOP OF THIS LIST: “Bad Syndication,” CMS Webmaster, Oct. 11. Excellent advice on which kinds of content do and don’t work well in a webfeed, and why. (Read the rest of this list…)
December 3, 2004 – 5:19 pm
Here is a bunch of cool tools, tips, and techniques that caught my attention over the past month.
TOP OF THIS LIST: Pretty purple states. Lately, dualistic, polarized thinking and debate of all kinds has been bugging me big time. The recent slew of inane “red state/blue state” chatter concerning the US election is simply one example of this. Check out “Maps and cartograms of the 2004 US presidential election results” from the Univ. Michigan. They use cartograms (maps distorted to represent weighting by factors such as population) to visually convey a far more nuanced and accurate version of the 2004 election results. The electoral college may be a flat red and blue, but the reality of the US electorate has a subtler palette. Bravo! (Read the rest of the list…)
December 3, 2004 – 5:17 pm
åmedia, and journalism which caught my attention over the last month. TOP OF THIS LIST: “Media / Political Bias,” an essay from “Rhetorica.” Thoughtful discourse by a former journalist who explores, in details, the various kinds of bias that exist in journalism. This completely bypasses the false liberal/conservative dualism and goes right to the heart of the matter. (Read the rest of this list…)
October 31, 2004 – 5:04 pm
Here’s a collection of items related to writing and editing that have caught my attention lately. TOP OF THIS LIST: “Buzzwordify, by Eric Rice, Oct. 21. Recoiling in horror from yet another buzzword-laden web page, Rice suggests a blogger rebellion. I’m with you on that, Eric — and I’m doing my part right here! (Read the rest of this list…)
October 31, 2004 – 4:06 pm
Here are some cool tools that I wanted to tell you about. TOP OF THIS LIST: NewsGator Online is now free. I know several people who use and love Newsgator, a service that bundles an online feed reader with other neat features and integrates with Microsoft Outlook. I’m not a Microsoft person, so I haven’t been inclined to pay for NewsGator so far. However, now that the online version is free, I might give it a try. I’ll see if it gives Bloglines a run for the money. (Read the rest of this list…)
October 31, 2004 – 4:04 pm
I recently started writing about a new way to distribute audio content online called podcasting. Here are some more items related to this emerging field that have caught my interest. TOP OF THIS LIST: It’s a tie: “Podcasting: Not Ready for Prime Time” (by John C. Dvorak, PC Magazine, Oct. 25) and its counterpoint, “John C. Dvorak Trashes Podcasting and IT Conversations” (by the incensed Doug Kaye Blogarithms, Oct. 25). It a little bit of “Crossfire,” right here in the blogosphere. (Read the rest of this list…)
October 31, 2004 – 3:18 pm
Here’s a collection of items related to webfeeds that have caught my attention lately. TOP OF THIS LIST: “A culture of feeds: syndication and youth culture,” Apophenia weblog, Oct. 10. Danah Boyd cuts through some of the webfeed hype. Excerpt: “Sitting in at Web2.0 for 20 seconds, I was intrigued by the ongoing hype of RSS. …For this audience, I think that it is certainly true. But I’m wondering if that’s really true beyond the info-nerds.” (Read the rest of this list…)
October 31, 2004 – 3:13 pm
Here’s a collection of items on the topic of blogging that have caught my interest lately. TOP OF THIS LIST: “Comment Spammers: internet pigs and how they feed,” by Steven Streight, “Vaspers the Grate” weblog, Oct. 29. A brilliant manifesto! (Read the rest of this list…)
October 31, 2004 – 2:43 pm
This is an assortment of items that demonstrate how the internet is affecting or reflecting society — including free speech issues. TOP OF THIS LIST: “My FactCheck.org RSS Project,” NetNerds, Oct. 23. Finally, someone has created a good scraped webfeed for FactCheck.org, just in time for the election. (Read the rest of this list…)
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